Skyguards need far, FAR more Velocity.

Seriously, for the ONLY dedicated AA Big Gun, these things are pathetic. If you have to lead on a Weapon as much as the distance between Your target, then something is Wrong.

i will admit it isn't very user friendly.

How about a 100 round magazine with a Magazine cert line that gives 10 per level?


dakka dakka

IMO Skyguard should get better accuracy and velocity but slightly less damage.

But balance it so that a skilled shooter will do more damage than they do now with the skyguard.

Skyguard should be more deadly, but only in the right hands.
Also it would be nice to see them get more XP for deterring aircraft.

In my opinion Skyguard needs heat-seeking grenades. Also I would increase the velocity speed to 1000m/s and damage by 25%. Oh, nearly forgot the accuracy, it should be between 0.1 - 0.3 CoF.

And currently when it takes 2 clips to destroy a Sunderer it totally should one clip it. Also MBT and AP Lightning should fear Skyguards.

Skyguard is on a good spot ATM, no need to buff\nerf it

Don't trust me? Look at my stats

Imo, a slight COF reduction would be enouth to makes skyguard more competitive at AA and less defenseless by ground stuffs.

But SOE would be able to give it a 0.1 COF and nerf it to release state into the next patch.

I fail to understand why leading your shots isn't a simple work around for slow bullet velocity...

I tend to agree. I can hit liberators up to render distance - not consistently, but still. Let's not design a skill cap around the lowest common denominator.

how about we just make ESF immediately light on fire and explode any time the get within render distance of a skyguard. as a dedicated skyguard i will say outright that giving me that large a clip would be severely OP.

wut? i kill plenty of aircraft out at render range. finding the proper lead is difficult but aircraft telegraph their movement so much that holding lead once you have found it is cake.

be careful with jokes like this there are people who legitimately believe things like this.

it is, BUT figuring out lead 2 or 3 seconds ahead of targets isn't an easy thing to do and so most people who skyguard see the effective range as pitifully short. imagine any target you would fire at and then imagine that you would have to wait 2 or 3 seconds for shots to land after you had fired and also those shots become invisible to you so you can't see if you are firing long or short so all you get is the little hit detection 'X'. that is exactly how long range skyguard fire works, if you are being hit by a skyguard that is out of render range then you were either A. sitting still way too long B. he just got lucky or C. he has mastered leading shots.

skyguards are incredibly deadly, but they are not user friendly at all. i have been at it since closed beta.

Because if your shots are slow enough that your target can change direction before your shot lands (largely because the PS2 flight model is rather divorced from any realistic flight model with meaningful momentum), then it doesn't matter how well you lead. Your shot will miss because the enemy aircraft is now moving in a different direction than where you predicted he would move.

They can fix this by overhauling PS2's flight model so aircraft can't so easily change their speed and heading (which is unlikely) or they can increase the Skyguard's velocity to compensate for the fact that aircraft don't behave like aircraft.

If you want to see what slightly more realistic flight models feel like, just try War Thunder. Or even BF1942 or something. But the PS2 "turn on a dime and reverse on a whim" flight model is simply absurd.

Higher velocity would increase long range accuracy against evading targets and thus lower the chance of air escaping once opened up on. That would make the Skyguard closer to an air killer, contrary to the stated design goal of deterrence.

First, they should redo the RAT (Reinforced Armor - Top). Actually it's a directional armor.
It should give resistance against all airplane, something like +30% effective HP against air unit (whatever direction the damage come from)

In your point of view, what is supposed to be the ground unit with the "air killer" role ?

For some reason, you seem to be the only person in all of Planetside 2 that takes issue with it's flight engine.

While you may have grown up on flight simulators similar to War Thunder, the fact of the matter is that Planetside 2 is unique. War Thunder is WWII Era aircraft. You cannot possibly compare the two.

And in fact, the flight paths of PS2 Aircraft are not to far from reality anymore. I saw a video a while back that was spreading around the forums when another argument like that came up that shows a modern aircraft using Vtol engines to turn around in even less time then it takes for an ESF to Reverse, while going much faster.

And regardless, even disregarding all of that, in the end, it's just a video game. Total realism is not mean complete fun. I can tell that you are one who likes more realism, and to some extent I agree with you. But, there are ways to make aircraft more hit and run, that don't include butchering their flight mechanics, and half their weapons in the process.

If we upped the damage of the Dalton and Zephyr while increasing the reload speed(20% damage/30% Reload sounds fair), you would make them more focused on Hit-And-Run, while letting the Shredder not go completely extinct, as it relies on sustained damage. Not only that, but the Tank Buster is already a pain to use in conjunction with a belly gun, and further alterations to the physics would make it all that much harder without some major unnecessary overhaul.

And if anything else, before you nerf aircraft any further, I still want a way to participate in larger fights without getting completely destroyed the second I enter LoS.

YES. There is obviously no sarcasm in your post, and I know that what you are suggesting it to be able to do is perfectly legit

That is a good point. What should this vehicle be? A Walker Sunderer? Nah, I want aircraft to be destroyed when they should be.

The point wasn't about realism at all. The point was that flak cannon can't lead targets when those targets can quickly switch their heading and speed quickly.

It's the same reason why SPAAGs are rather outdated today, and instead most AA systems are armed with SAMs instead. Aircraft are simply too agile to try and "lead"... so you have missiles take care of that for you.

Now because pilots don't like "no skill" missiles, the reasonable solution is to increase Skyguard shell velocity to make up for the fact that PS2 aircraft aren't WWII aircraft. Essentially WWII flak is great against WWII prop planes with predictable flight paths and trajectories... but if you want us to fight against "futuristic" aircraft that have extreme maneuverability, then we need "futuristic" SPAAGs to deal with them. And upping shell velocity is one way to do that.

And when an aircraft is supposed to be destroyed against ground unit ?
Actually, liberator TTk with skyguard is fine (but skyguard lose DPS race against lib isn't a good thing)
About ESF, if they get hit at short range (~30m) and aren't in hover mode, they just have to press turbo to be 500 meter away in some sec.

I don't ask for a buff like this :


I just want skyguard to be more useful.
For that, they need :
-more resistance to airplane (top armor revamp)
-more versatile

With that, skyguard will be pulled more and won't need a buff against airplane.

While I suppose starting out the Skyguard velocity can take some getting use to I don't feel it needs a change. I personally find the velocity aspect of the weapon to be a large part of why I find it enjoyable to use. With the addition of air deterrence ribbons, air damage exp, and the 20 round buff the Skyguard is in a far better spot than it has ever been.

The only thing I wish to see is the return of its' PS1 chaingun. The COF makes defending against infantry playing peek-a-boo (or even running out in the open) thoroughly infuriating as it's entirely up to random chance for a direct hit at any reasonable range (plus being a massive waste of ammo).

Tried the Skyguard for the first time yesterday. Holy crap it ripped air-vehicles apart!

Not that i should be surprised, i have been on the receiving end of these, wondering where my health suddenly disappear to and barely spotting some kind of tank just outside the range of what i can possible shoot back from, with an ungodly amount of tracer bullets coming from it.
And with barely any recoil to speak of, leading is easy. Some pilots can try to do acrobatics to avoid it, but at least that keeps them occupied and not shooting back. It just delays their deaths.

I assume its easy to take out by a coordinated effort, both because of its weak top-armor and its tracers. Then its just a matter of sneaking up on it with a c4, which is what eventually happened to me.

Anyway, thats my first-try opinion.